


Playing by ear

by thisprettywren



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-02
Updated: 2011-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't the first stupid thing he'd done to impress a girl, but John hated that blasted clarinet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing by ear

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Cycle 2, Challenge 4 over at [thegameison_sh](http://community.livejournal.com/thegameison_sh/). The prompt was "five years older/younger."

It wasn’t the first stupid thing John had done to impress a girl. It wouldn’t be the last, either, or even the most objectively ill-advised. 

 

Even so, the clarinet was the absolute bloody worst of a bad lot.

 

The clarinet wasn’t his choice, for a start. What he’d wanted was a proper instrument: trumpet, maybe or drums. Yes, the drums seemed like just the ticket.

 

It wasn’t the music he was after, after all. Truth be told, he’d never much cared for it.

 

No, what John cared for was Hannah. Lovely Hannah Dobson with her freckles and bony shoulders and glossy brown hair. John had been in love with her for _weeks_ , at least. At fifteen, it was an eternity.

 

They didn’t have much in common, but they would. Hannah would sit in the front row, graceful fingers curled around the silver keys of her flute, while John sat a row or two behind (or standing at the back, ready to punctuate a dramatic moment with a strike on the bass drum or a cymbal or whatever-it-was they were doing back there; truth be told, John had no idea).

 

“Absolutely not,” his mum had said. “We’re not buying you a trumpet, and drums are too loud. You can use Harry’s old clarinet.”

 

“But the clarinet’s all _wrong_.”

 

She raised one eyebrow in his direction. “If you want to learn an instrument, it’s that or nothing,” his mum had said, and John knew enough even at that age to recognise when further argument was pointless.

 

“Fine,” he’d answered sulkily, and gone to dig it out of its place in the attic.

 

God, he hated it. Hated everything about it, from the way its weight pressed shiny red patches into his thumbs to the stupid cardboard taste of the reed. Still, there was Hannah, just on the other side of the conductor, and maybe if he learned to be a bloody brilliant clarinet player….

 

It was immediately clear, even to him, that _bloody brilliant_ wasn’t on the table, or indeed even in the building. John managed the fingerings all right—surgeon’s hands, after all, though he didn’t know it yet—but he was tone-deaf, hopelessly so. 

 

“You sound like a dying duck,” Harry said, passing by the door to his bedroom one evening while he forced himself to practise.

 

“I _know_ ,” John spit back. “Piss off.”

 

“A dying duck hitting a chalkboard,” came the parting shot, and it would have solved all his problems if he’d just hurled the wretched thing at her right then, but he repressed the urge.

 

He kept it up for nearly two months, Hannah scarcely even looking at him the whole time (which was just as well, seeing as whenever he wasn’t playing he was obliged to sit there with the reed poking out of his mouth like a bloody mockery of a tongue. _What girl wouldn’t find_ that _irresistible_ , he thought bitterly) until finally one day the conductor berated him for missing an entrance and it was like a door opening in his mind.

 

“I’m done with this. Cheers, everyone,” he said, and left, just set the clarinet down and walked out the door of the rehearsal room. (He never did find out what became of it. No one at home ever asked; no doubt they were too relieved not to have to hear him play anymore.)

 

Three days later John exited the school library to see Hannah dropping a book in the return slot.

 

 _Right_ , he thought, _might as well try the direct approach_.

 

Her face brightened when she saw him. “John! We’ve missed you.”

 

Just the sight of her made his tongue dart out against his lips, habit from wetting the reed. How embarrassing. “No you haven’t.”

 

“Not with our _ears_ , no,” she said with a quirk of her mouth. “Wish I could quit. My mum won’t let me. Are you going to start something else instead?”

 

John hadn’t thought about it, but he said the first thing that came to mind. “Rugby, I think.”

 

Hannah blushed. “Oh! I quite like, er, rugby. I’ll come watch.”

 

“Wish you’d told me that months ago,” John laughed.

 

“You didn’t _ask_ ,” she said, and she was smiling too. “A date, then?”

 

John wasn’t quite sure how they’d there, but it seemed direct _was_ better. He’d have to remember that.

 

“Absolutely.”


End file.
